A media access controller or MAC is often located within a semiconductor device or “chip”. The MAC is an IEEE standard implementation and operates according to the standard for an IEEE 802.3 media access controller, which is hereby incorporated herein by reference. One function of a MAC is to communicate packet data over a physical medium, e.g. an optical fiber or a conductive wire. In other words, the MAC is the interface between the physical medium and the higher layer functions in a device, such as an operating system, an Ethernet bridge, a switch, or a routing function. The MAC communicates with other devices, e.g. other MACs located on the chip (or remote chips) through the use of a serializer/desterilizer (SerDes) device that converts parallel data from the MAC into serial data for transmission over the physical medium. The SerDes also converts received serial data into parallel data for use with its associated MAC. The current state of the art for gigabit and slower Ethernet MAC interfaces is to use one SerDes for each MAC. Since there is only one MAC per each SerDes, the speeds of the MAC and the SerDes are about the same. For 10 gigabit Ethernet MAC interfaces, the most common interface is called XAUI, which uses four SerDes for each MAC.